


black butterflies & déjà vu

by Directionless_Foray



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Violence, Self-Harm, not very fun, seb/charles if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21531703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Directionless_Foray/pseuds/Directionless_Foray
Summary: Sometimes Charles wonders if the world will ever get tired of taking things from him.Sooner or later, he realises, he's going to run out of things left to lose.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	black butterflies & déjà vu

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE do heed the tags! There is a reference to self-harm and blood. 
> 
> Otherwise, this is just 600+ words of gratuitous sad boy Charles.

Sometimes Charles wonders if the world will ever get tired of taking things from him.

Sooner or later, he realises, he's going to run out of things left to lose. The ground itself, once solid beneath his feet, will crumble into a fine dust. Leaving him stranded in a perpetual free fall.

So he sticks his hands out and tries to frantically grab at anything he can, desperate to bridge this ever-widening gulf between the things that he once had and are now forever lost. He presses every shiny little trinket and fragment of broken glass he picks up against the hole in his chest.

Gasping as he tries to fill a void that just never stops growing. As he tries in vain to replace things that are now only memories. Whispering tendrils of smoke that carry the faded scent of days long gone.

This deficit grows. The world takes.

It _takes_ and it _takes_ until Charles has nothing left.

It _takes_ until he cannot feel it anymore. Until he starts waking up in his bed feeling like he is bleeding out on the pavement. 

It _takes_ until he is a shell, an empty husk. He just can't seem to plug this hole in his chest and everything is streaming out of it. Whatever he does to try and stem this internal bleeding is futile and leaves his hands stained crimson. 

It _takes_ until it has hardened his milky skin into an armour of diamond. Smooth and cool to the touch. Impenetrable. Polished marble walls guard the empty palace and whatever treasures he has managed to stow away in spaces between his ribs.

Sometimes he'll stand in front of the mirror in his bathroom and for an entire hour, he won't recognise himself even once.

Other times he'll catch himself staring at the set of steel kitchen knives on his kitchen bench, wondering, if someone stuck one in between his ribs, whether he'd still bleed. If he still can.

If he has anything left to give.

Sometimes he's tempted to do it himself, to confirm once and for all that he is still here in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. To watch the coppery blood pool in his cupped hands. Proving that there is still someone or something, even if it's just human biology, that is protecting him from the world.

Preventing him from ceasing to exist.

Other times he'll look across the garage at Sebastian and if he could feel anything at all, he imagines he would be seething with jealousy. The world gives to him with one hand and takes from him with the other. And yet-

Sebastian still smiles.

Seemingly shrugs his shoulders and dusts himself off after each and every fall.

He picks himself up after tripping over and Charles-

Charles thinks he tripped over a rock in his shoe years ago and never fully recovered. Never got back up again.

Every once in awhile Sebastian will bend over or reach over to scratch the back of his neck and his shirt will ride up to expose a sliver of pale skin. Charles watches impassively. He imagines that if he pressed his hands against the soft skin stretched over Sebastian's ribcage it would be warm.

Maybe even warm enough to jumpstart whatever parts of him are frozen in blocks of solid ice.

Charles often dreams of sitting in front of an open fire, holding his numb fingers up dangerously close to the flickering flames and praying that the feeling will return soon.

Perhaps today is the day that the world stops _taking_ and gives Charles the opportunity to hug the rescued fragments of his life to his chest begin rebuilding his existence. _Maybe-_

Something twists the knife wedged firmly in Charles' chest. The world takes.

Charle is more shell than man. He is ice and stone and a flawless diamond.

The world takes and he continues to breathe around all the pain. 


End file.
